Simon Abramovitch

Instant messaging has changed the way we communicate, offering its own pros, cons, accesses, and limitations. It’s a unique medium, like letter-writing mixed with a talking conversation, but not quite either one alone. That being said, it would tend to its own conventions, suited to its communicative medium type. Instant messenger chats are more flippant than real chats - you can easily get out of one - and offer more opportunity for careful phrasing with flexible response times. They do, however, waste a great deal of time as far as time for a conversation (how long would the same exchange take verbally?).

When the other person’s typing, you’re doing nothing - for that chat, at least. You use the opportunity to browse a bit, or to chat with others at the same time. But doing other things will inevitably slow the original conversation, somewhat, which you might not always be fine with. You won’t always be back in the chat window just as the other person sends their message. Or, if you are back early, you will still have that awkward MSN stare time. Also, you may not want to browse around or talk to other people, but you may still want to not lose that time spent staring.

What about bringing up a second chat, with the same person? Also, sometimes, you want to make a quick point, or ask a quick question, but don’t necessarily mean to steer the conversation away, or break of the (visual) conversational flow too much. Because of the extra time afforded for information digestion, a second chat (or line of dialogue) can be added when both persons chatting are devoting sufficient attention. I’ve been in chats where this has happened. They worked, but sometimes required extra words to make context clear and keep the conversation steady. Later, I started using parentheses ( ) for a secondary chat, and most of the time, without any discussion about it, my interlocutor picked up on the convention and followed suit! There were some issues with occasional normal parenthetical use, but otherwise, it organized the sub-chat to a great degree, especially useful in chats with long paragraphs.

That being said, I think a better way might be to use square brackets []. They’re rarely used in chat, and will give the same hint of tone change.

I suppose that the use is fairly parenthetical: it’s a parenthetical chat. Instant messaging is the first medium for which parenthetical conversation, without the addition of contextual words, can happen. It’s possible, in a limited form, in verbal conversation, but requires active intonation. Since instant messaging lacks intonation, a notational substitute may indeed be in order.

I’m going to give it a full shot. Give it a try, see if you like it. And remember, this isn’t about creating rules, so don’t stress about keeping conversations strictly separated. Conversations can still flow naturally, and don’t need heavy formal organization. This is meant to be a tool to make instant messaging conversations easier and more efficient.

Extra notes:

This method’s scalable: a sub-sub-chat can easily expressed by double square brackets [[]].

I’d hope that this would never bleed into unconversational, general prose. It would be an all-too-tempting sloppy escape for structurally disorganized writing.